Though coach Hayden Fry left the school in 1978 with a 9-3 season, he also left it with a mounting athletics debt,[3] and the team was subsequently demoted to Division I-AA status by the NCAA.[4] In 1982, the university recognized that the athletics program had a deficit of $1.6 million and voted to join the Southland Conference.[5] The program experienced little success in subsequent years, but in 1995, a coordinated campaign by donors to purchase large blocks of seats at Fouts Field spiked the average attendance enough for the school to enter Division I-A once again in 1995.[4]

After the school joined the Sun Belt Conference in 2001, Darrell Dickey briefly revived fortunes in Denton, winning four straight conference championships. The Mean Green played in the 2001 New Orleans Bowl despite a regular-season finish at 5-6 after winning the Sun Belt title with a 5-1 conference record. After going 2-9 and 3-9 in his eighth and ninth seasons, the athletic department fired Dickey on November 8, 2006.

The school then hired Todd Dodge, who had been offensive coordinator at UNT from 1991-1992, on December 12, 2006. Dodge had been one of the nation's most successful high school football coaches, amassing a 98-11 record overall at Carroll High School in Southlake, Texas, including a 79-1 record over his last 5 years. His teams at UNT struggled to win, however, compiling a 6-37 record overall and a 3-23 record in conference play. After a 1-6 start to the 2010 season, the school fired Dodge. He was replaced by offensive coordinator Mike Canales as interim head coach. In 2011, the university hired Dan McCarney as head coach. McCarney was the head coach at Iowa State from 1995 through 2006; he then served as defensive line coach for both the University of South Florida and the University of Florida just prior to his hiring at North Texas.

Since 2011, the Mean Green have played at Apogee Stadium, formerly named Mean Green Stadium. The stadium seats 31,000. The team boasts an impressive 12-6 record at the stadium and went 5-1 there in 2013. The average attendance was 21,030 at the stadium in 2013, the highest at the stadium and in the team's history. It is named after ResNet provider Apogee, who paid for the naming rights. The highest ever attended game at the stadium occurred on September 9, 2011 for the inaugural game versus the Houston Cougars in which 28,075 saw the Mean Green fall to the Cougars. The stadium has never been sold out, but is expandable to 50,000 if ever necessary. The stadium is widely viewed as one of the best smaller college footballstadiums. It is part of the Mean Green Village, an athletic complex situated at the intersection of Interstate 35 east and west. The stadium is recognizable by its trademark eagle wing in the endzone, facing the freeway. It is the first stadium to be LEED certified, powered by three electric windmills.

From 1952 to 2010, the team played its home games at Fouts Field. The first game was a 55–0 win over the North Dakota Fighting Sioux in 1952. The final Mean Green game was a 41–49 loss to the Kansas State Wildcats in 2010. The Mean Green posted a final record at Fouts Field of 155–100–7. From 1971 through 2001, the Mean Green played 21 home games at Texas Stadium in Irving, Texas, 32 miles away from the university's campus in Denton. The team posted a 9-12 record while playing selected home games in Irving. Only one season, 1972, saw the Mean Green play more games at Texas Stadium (4) than on their home field (1) in Denton.[7]

SMU and North Texas share the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex as their home. The two teams have played 34 times dating back to 1922. The most recent meetings between the two teams occurred in 2014, when the Mean Green defeated the Mustangs 43-6. SMU leads the all-time series 28-4-1 but North Texas holds a 3 to 2 edge in the last quarter century. After SMU moved to The American, North Texas was invited to Conference USA.

The game is often referred to as the Safeway Bowl which derives its name from a challenge from then North Texas head coach Matt Simon issued in 1994 after a two-year break in the series, stating "I'd like to play because I think we could beat them, and my players feel the same way. If they'd like to play on a Safeway parking lot ... just give us a date and time."

SMU and North Texas will play each other every year from 2014 to 2025 for a scheduled twelve game series.